Army veteran, 88, still working full time after losing pension has $1.5 million raised for him
Just as his wife became ill, Ed Bambas' pension was taken away from him
An 88-year-old army veteran who was still working full time can probably retire now if he wants after people raised more than a million dollars for him.
Michigan man Ed Bambas has gone viral after he was spotted working as a cashier in a job at a local grocery store he got a decade after he retired as he needed the money to pay his bills.
Videos of him working his cashier job have been viewed millions of times as he explained that in recent years he's lost his wife, pension and health insurance so he needed to return to full time work in order to make ends meet.
The veteran explained to WXYZ that he'd retired from General Motors in 1999 and had been expecting that they would be able to live out the rest of their days together in comfort.
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He said: "I felt comfortable. I felt I had a stable financial footing. I owned my house, we didn't have any major worries."
However, when General Motors went bankrupt in 2012 he lost the rest of his pension, and then his wife became ill leaving him with significant medical bills to pay and no money coming in.
His wife passed away seven years ago, with Ed having been her full-time carer for the final years of her life, and he was forced to come out of retirement and start working again in order to pay his bills.
"Once my wife died, I didn't have enough income to pay for this place or all the other bills I had accumulated because of my wife's illness," the 88-year-old explained.
He first got a job at Ace Hardware before getting a role as a cashier at Meijer.
“It wasn't hard for me to do it because I knew I had to do it. I'm fortunate God gave me a good enough body to be strong enough to stand there for eight, eight and a half hours a day," he said.
Since people learned about Ed's situation they've put their hands in their pockets and donated over $1.5 million to a GoFundMe, which you can still donate to here, in the hopes that he can live the rest of his life in comfort.
Samuel Weidenhofer, an Australian influencer, filmed an encounter with Ed and set up the GoFundMe.
He said on Tuesday (2 December) that they were going to surprise Ed with the money 'in four or five days' as they were working on getting a bank account with the funds set up for him.
Thousands of people's donations should help the man be able to retire again instead of having to spend five days a week at work.
Sometimes people really can do good.
Joe Harker